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Indigenous Children's Rights Violations in Sri Lanka

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Indigenous Children's Rights Violations in Sri Lanka Convention on the Rights of the Child Shadow Report Submission: Indigenous Children’s Rights Violations in Sri Lanka December 2017 Prepared for the 77th session Submitted by: Cultural Survival 2067 Massachusetts Avenue Cambridge, MA 02140 Tel: 1 (617) 441 5400 [email protected] www.culturalsurvival.org 0 Convention on the Rights of the Child Alternative Report Submission: Violations of Indigenous Children’s Rights in Sri Lanka I. Reporting Organization Cultural Survival is an international Indigenous rights organization with a global Indigenous leadership and consultative status with ECOSOC since 2005. Cultural Survival is located in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and is registered as a 501(c)(3) non-profit organization in the United States. Cultural Survival monitors the protection of Indigenous Peoples' rights in countries throughout the world and publishes its findings in its magazine, the Cultural Survival Quarterly; and on its website: www.cs.org. II. Background Information Sri Lanka, officially the Democratic Socialist Republic of Sri Lanka, is an island state in South Asia located southeast of India in the Indian Ocean. Sri Lanka gained independence from the British on 4 February 1948.1 Sri Lanka is home to many cultures, languages and ethnicities. The majority of the population is from the Sinhalese ethnicity, with a large minorities of Tamils and Sri Lankan Moors.2 Contemporary politics in Sri Lanka has been dominated by the question of resolving minority rights, in particular the Tamil population.3 The country is still recovering from the effects of a civil war fought primarily between the Sinhalese government and the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam from 1983 to 2009.4 The Wanniyala-Aetto (forest-dwellers), commonly referred to as Veddhas, comprise a very small community of Indigenous Peoples in Sri Lanka.5 They live mostly as nomadic forest-dwellers in the remote eastern parts of the country, and their entire community is under threat.6 According to legend and oral tradition, the Wanniyala-Aetto can trace their ancestry to the island’s original Neolithic community dating from at least 14,000 BCE. They lived on the island before both the Sinhalese and the Tamils.7 To this day the Wanniyala-Aetto are distinguished by their traditional hunting and gathering practices, their oral language (which is closely related to but distinct from 1 “World Directory of Minorities and Indigenous Peoples - Sri Lanka.” Refworld, Minority Rights Group International, 2007, www.refworld.org/docid/4954ce2c23.html. [hereinafter: MRGI Sri Lanka Report] 2 Census of Population and Housing. Department of Census and Statistics - Sri Lanka, 2012, http://www.statistics.gov.lk/PopHouSat/CPH2011/Pages/Activities/Reports/FinalReport/Population/FinalP opulation.pdf. [hereinafter 2012 Census] 3 MRGI Sri Lanka Report. 4 Bajoria, Jayshree. The Sri Lankan Conflict. Council on Foreign Relations, 18 May 2009, www.cfr.org/backgrounder/sri-lankan-conflict. 5 Indigenous People in Sri Lanka. Lanka.com, 2 Mar. 2017, www.lanka.com/about/Indigenous-people/. 6 MRGI Sri Lanka Report. 7 “World Directory of Minorities and Indigenous Peoples - Sri Lanka: Veddhas.” Refworld, Minority Rights Group International, 2008, www.refworld.org/docid/4954ce2c23.html. [hereinafter: MRGI Veddhas Report] 1 Sinhalese), their beliefs in traditional gods and ancestor spirits, and by the spiritual importance that they place on their ancestral lands, which affects all aspects of life.8 The traditional nomadic lifestyle of the Wanniyala-Aetto is under threat today. Wanniyala-Aetto leaders complain that the government continues to encourage encroachment and seizure of their lands.9 The many in the majority Sinhalese population regard Wanniyala-Aetto as evil and unwanted, both as part of their culture and as a result of the island’s mythical and legendary history. According to legend, Prince Vijaya (6th-5th century BCE), who led the original colonists from north India and founded the first Sinhalese kingdom, married Kuveni, a woman of the Indigenous Yakkha community, as his first wife. However, he later cast her aside along with their two children for a higher-caste princess from south India. Kuveni then returned to her “demon people” and her children fled into the forest and became the primogenitors of the Wanniyala-Aetto.10 Wanniyala-Aetto are not distinguished in the most recent census in Sri Lanka, which was carried out in 2012. Similarly, the other two most recent censuses, from 1981 and 1971, do not provide any figures regarding the Wanniyala-Aetto population.11 Instead they are included in the “other” category, which was numbered at 2,000 individuals in 198112 and 18,215 individuals in 2012.13 The numerical strength of the Wanniyala-Aetto is dwindling quickly, primarily because many are being assimilated into Sinhalese and Tamil society. Although no precise figures are available, the estimated population in 2006 was just below 2000.14 According to the 2012 census, the total population of Sri Lanka was 20,359,439.15 5,131,666 (25.2%) of the population were aged 14 or under, the mean age was 32 years and the median age was 31 years.16 Sri Lanka became a party to the Convention on the Rights of the Child in 1991.17 According to UNICEF, despite significant gains for children since the adoption of the Convention on the Rights of the Child, the world has not delivered upon its commitments to Indigenous children. Whether they live in low-, middle- or high-income countries, Indigenous children continue to face glaring disparities across all human development indicators.18 8 MRGI Veddhas Report. 9 Ibid. 10 Ibid. 11 Ibid. 12 Ibid. 13 2012 Census at 19. 14 MRGI Veddhas Report. 15 2012 Census. 16 2012 Census. 17 Reporting Status for Sri Lanka. UN OHCHR, http://tbinternet.ohchr.org/_layouts/TreatyBodyExternal/Countries.aspx?CountryCode=LKA&Lang=EN. 18 UNICEF. “UNICEF: Indigenous children left behind in their countries’ progress” August 9, 2014. 2 It also joined the Optional Protocol to the Convention on the Rights of the Child on the involvement of children in armed conflict in 2000, and the Optional Protocol to the Convention on the Rights of the Child on the sale of children child prostitution and child pornography in 2006.19 Sri Lanka voted in favor of the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples,20 but the government has not passed any domestic legislation to ensure these rights.21 Sri Lanka is not a party to ILO Convention No. 169 concerning Indigenous and Tribal Peoples in Independent Countries.22 III. Ongoing Rights Violations A. General Discrimination (Article 2) Human rights reporting in Sri Lanka is overwhelming focused on the Tamil-Sinhalese conflict and the Wanniyala-Aetto have not been given attention.23 The invisibility of Indigenous Peoples is a problem throughout the world and it frequently leads to laws and policies that ignore their presence and thus perpetuate systems of structural discrimination against them. Often, the only visibility of Indigenous Peoples in society comes in the form of stereotypes, such as in Sri Lanka where the word “Veddha” is sometimes used in common parlance as an insult.24 A call in outcome document of the World Conference on Indigenous Peoples to disaggregate data to shed light on the situation of Indigenous has been left unheeded in Sri Lanka. B. Cultural, Religious, and Linguistic Rights (Articles 14, 29, and 30) Assimilation into Sri Lankan society is probably the biggest threat to the Wanniyala-Aetto community today--some experts believe that traditional hunter-gatherers and forest-dwellers may 19 Ibid. 20 General Assembly Adopts Declaration On Rights Of Indigenous Peoples. United Nations, 13 Sept. 2007, www.un.org/press/en/2007/ga10612.doc.htm. 21 Uthayakumar, Prasha. The Rights of Indigenous Peoples in Sri Lanka. The Law & Society Trust, 16 Sept. 2015, www.lawandsocietytrust.org/content_images/publications/documents/Indigenous%20people%20in%20sri %20lanka%20-report%20-%20issue%2016.pdf. 22 Ratifications of C169 - Indigenous and Tribal Peoples Convention, 1989 (No. 169). International Labour Organization, www.ilo.org/dyn/normlex/en/f?p=1000%3A11300%3A0%3A%3ANO%3A11300%3AP11300_INSTRUME NT_ID%3A312314. 23 Childs, Kevin. The Last Veddas of Sri Lanka. New Internationalist, 10 Jan. 2017, www.newint.org/features/web-exclusive/2017/01/10/the-last-veddas-of-sri-lanka. [hereinafter: New Int’l] 24 Ibid. 3 become extinct within a generation.25 The discrimination faced by the Wanniyala-Aetto pressures them into a process of “Sinhalization and Tamilization.”26 Indigenous children are now taught the Sinhalese language and the Indigenous Wanniyala-Aetto language is functionally extinct.27 Many Wanniyala-Aetto children (as well as adults) are also being converted to Buddhism or Christianity.28 Those Wanniyala-Aetto who continue to practice their Indigenous traditions are tokenized by the government and treated as a tourist attraction by the Ministry of Culture.29 Yet, according to research from Professor Premakumara De Silva, 64% of the Wanniyala-Aetto wish to remain true to their Indigenous roots.30 According to T.B Gunawardena, an Indigenous community member from Pollebedda, “We will be respected only if we remain as Veddas. If we become identical to the common Sinhalese, we will lose the pride of being Veddas. Therefore, we prefer to carry on our ancestry.”31 The assimilation process has been accelerated by the displacement of Wanniyala-Aetto from their traditional lands into government reserve villages where they are unable to maintain their traditional practices and livelihood as hunter-gatherers. This process has been going on since Sri Lanka obtained independence in the 1950s when Indigenous territories were first opened up for Sinhalese settlement, and forests and hunting grounds were bulldozed and flooded.32 Then, in the 1980s the Wanniyala-Aetto’s last remaining forest refuge was turned into the Maduru Oya National Park.33 Indigenous Peoples were banned from entering the park without a permit and forbidden from hunting the park--even fishing requires a permit.34 The loss of their forests robbed the Wanniyala-Aetto of their means of subsistence, and of much what gave their lives meaning.
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